Back to sleep we go...

There was a time not so long ago when we understood the dangers of the world around us, and took steps to ensure our security. In the process, we revamped our national security apparatus to better deal with the threats we face, taking down the "Chinese Wall" between the FBI and CIA that prevented collaboration, and freeing up the National Security Agency to monitor terrorist communications. It was a retreat from the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" Clinton years, when we slept while Al Qaeda planned its mayhem.

Today we are apparently headed back to bed, having decided that the changes made during the Bush years went too far. In this slumber of the dream-like, we choose to believe that it is better to be morally correct than safe, providing rights and protections to even the most evil among us. We have allowed the lawyers and left-wing civil rights crowd to bully us again into submission. Our memories are short, and the wreckage of 9/11 fades into the background. We are back into the world of the 1990s, playing a "peace dividend" that doesn't exist and seeking to grievously wound the security apparatus that is protecting us.

Daniel Henninger outlines this beautifully today in the Wall Street Journal in his piece "The War on Terror is Over". It is worth printing again here:

Shakespeare wrote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” As we know, that didn’t happen. Four hundred years later, they’re killing us with the smothering pillow of hyper-proceduralism. Now the lawyers are about to smother the war on terror.

This Monday, the same day that Attorney General Eric Holder named a special prosecutor to investigate persons who conducted the CIA's interrogations in the war on terror, Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill stood before his parliament and gave this defense for releasing convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi:

"It was not based on political, diplomatic or economic considerations. . . . My decision was made following due process, and according to the law of Scotland. I stand by the law and values of Scotland."

Faced with a similarly fastidious assertion of the law's triumphal self-regard in "Oliver Twist," Mr. Bumble replied: "If the law supposed that, the law is a ass—a idiot." Mr. Bumble added something acutely relevant to what is happening to the war on terror: "The worst I wish the law," said Mr. Bumble, "is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience."

The experience of a world beset by terror eludes the eyes of a Kenny MacAskill, Eric Holder and others in the Obama administration. The rest of us may suffer for it.

In a May speech at the National Archives, President Obama, mirroring Kenny MacAskill's remarks, said we had to "update our institutions" to deal with terrorism but "do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process."

That "update" is upon us. The smothering pillows have arrived.

Attorney General Holder named Connecticut prosecutor John Durham to conduct an investigation into whether interrogations by CIA employees warrant a criminal inquiry. It has been shown repeatedly the past 25 years that an office of independent counsel or special prosecutor nearly always puts in motion an Inspector Javert-like hunt for an indictable defendant.

Mr. Holder's justification, that his own reading of the "available facts" gave him no choice, is close to a preordained conclusion that Mr. Durham will cite one of these CIA guys for criminal prosecution.

The day of Mr. Holder's announcement, CIA Director Leon Panetta said his agency received "multiple written assurances its methods were lawful." It's now clear that even playing by the rules cannot stop erosion by legal challenge.

That day also brought the release of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's 2004 report on the agency's detention and interrogation of terror suspects. Both sides to this argument say the report supports their view of the CIA. No matter. What the release of the Helgerson report mainly does is open the dams on detainee lawsuits.

This litigation nightmare, together with the chilling effect of the special prosecutor's potential indictments, has as its goal making the price of aggressive interrogation too high under any circumstance, including a one-hour-bomb scenario.

To supervise future interrogations, the administration is creating something called a High Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Interrogation techniques will be limited to those in the Army Field Manual or that are "noncoercive," which suggests more constrained than a big-city police department. Authority is being moved from the CIA to the FBI.

This means that the class of person who blows up skyscrapers, American embassies or the USS Cole would spend less time under a bare light bulb than a domestic robbery suspect. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that the goal of a proposed administration "global justice initiative" would be to get all terror suspects into a U.S. or foreign court.

Eric Holder cited the Justice Department's Office of Legal Responsibility as influencing his decision to proceed with a CIA special prosecutor. This is the legal office that is expected to release its long-awaited report on whether former Bush Justice lawyers John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury should be cited for misconduct for providing the CIA with legal opinions about these interrogations. If, as expected, the OPR cites the lawyers, legal groups will try to disbar them. After that, no lawyer will go near the war on terror.

Individually, some of this may be arguable. In toto, it's a death sentence for an effective war on terror. It makes what's left of the war—telephone wiretaps or monitoring money transfers—vulnerable to a steady stream of congressional and legal objection. That lets the Obama administration evade political responsibility by letting others wind down the war on terror.

The message of Scotland's release and the Holder decision is that the will born in the wake of 9/11 is waning. The war on terror is being downgraded to not much more than tough talk. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Iranians, not yet converts to the West's caricature of its own legal traditions, will take note. In time, they will be back. The second war on terror is in the future.

So its back to sleep we go. We will wake up one morning to a brutal alarm clock, in the shape of a mushroom cloud or biological haze. And we will only have ourselves to blame.

Don't believe conservatives? Listen to a liberal on Obamacare

Courtesy of the WSJ, this from Nat Hentoff, noted liberal author, activist and civil rights advocate, and former writer for The Progressive and Village Voice. hHentoff is as "progressive" as they come. His take on Obamacare is worth noting and passing on to those who don't get it!

"I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model)—as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill—decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

The members of that ultimate federal board will themselves not have examined or seen the patient in question. For another example of the growing, tumultuous resistance to "Dr. Obama," particularly among seniors, there is a July 29 Washington Times editorial citing a line from a report written by a key adviser to Obama on cost-efficient health care, prominent bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

Emanuel writes about rationing health care for older Americans that "allocation (of medical care) by age is not invidious discrimination." (The Lancet, January 2009) He calls this form of rationing—which is fundamental to Obamacare goals—"the complete lives system." You see, at 65 or older, you've had more life years than a 25-year-old. As such, the latter can be more deserving of cost-efficient health care than older folks.

No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama's eventual master health care plan."

John Stossel skewers ObamaCare -- pass it on!

Sure, let's copy Canada!

Many who are in favor of a "public option" in this country for health care point to Canada as an example of where the system works well. Yes, I know it seems ludicrous on its face -- but those who live with the persistent vision of a state-run utopia think that government bureaucrats are well suited to taking care of sick people...and that "fairness" is more important than standards of care.

Anyhow, If you need ammo to refute such idiocy here's an article from the Vancouver Sun on how Canada's bankrupt system is having to ration care to save money -- and making life and death decisions in the process:

VANCOUVER — Vancouver patients needing neurosurgery, treatment for vascular diseases and other medically necessary procedures can expect to wait longer for care, NDP health critic Adrian Dix said Monday.

Dix said a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority document shows it is considering chopping more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to make up for a dramatic budgetary shortfall that could reach $200 million.

“This hasn’t been announced by the health authority … but these cuts are coming,” Dix said, citing figures gleaned from a leaked executive summary of “proposed VCH surgical reductions.”

The health authority confirmed the document is genuine, but said it represents ideas only.

“It is a planning document. It has not been approved or implemented,” said spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo.

Dr. Brian Brodie, president of the BC Medical Association, called the proposed surgical cuts “a nightmare.”

“Why would you begin your cost-cutting measures on medically necessary surgery? I just can’t think of a worse place,” Brodie said.

According to the leaked document, Vancouver Coastal — which oversees the budget for Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, among other health-care facilities — is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting in September and to cut 6,250 surgeries, including 24 per cent of cases scheduled from September to March and 10 per cent of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.

The plan proposes cutbacks to neurosurgery, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, and 11 other specialized areas.

As many of 112 full-time jobs — including 13 anesthesiologist positions — would be affected by the reductions, the document says.

“Clearly this will impact the capacity of the health-care system to provide care, not just now but in the future,” Dix said.

Now, that sounds like a great system to copy!

This is what we're dealing with

Many of you may have heard that Robert Novak passed away from brain cancer today at the age of 78. Novak was a long-time conservative political reporter and columnist and former host of Crossfire on CNN. My thoughts go out to his family and he will certainly be missed in conservative circles.

My main purpose, however, for citing Novak's death is to highlight the venom on the left -- and to give people a sense of just what we are dealing with. You may have heard about the "Daily Kos" and other left-wing blog sites, and I have occasionally linked to their idiocy when trying to prove a point. But I don't like to give them any more credibility than they deserve (which is none), so I rarely do what I am about to do -- and give you a taste of the filth that inhabits the radical left.

Courtesty of my friend Donald Douglas at American Power, here's a taste of the blogosphere's treatment of Novak (hold your nose, please):

From Crooks and Liars:

* Good Riddance ... To a self-serving coward and traitor to America.

* I suppose it beats ... being hanged by the neck until well and truly dead, as he deserved. Where do mean-spirited traitors who do their betrayals out of nothing more than spiteful vendictiveness go when they die?

* Tonight you dine in hell ... I'll celebrate with a cold beer, and hope there's a hell hot enough to burn your worthless soul.

* Sweet Schadenfreud! ...

It's chicken soup for our not-quite-top-drawer angels. As an atheist I'm unlikely to sit shiva for that recently departed... gentlemen and I'm certainly going to cut loose at some future thread should his name pop up. It is too bad that the ghosts of neo-cons past did not visit him and show him a better way. Yes you can dream. It is a noble one.

* He's Preparing the Way ... Novakula is in hell, arranging accommodations for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Kristol, Malkin, Wolfowitz, Limbaugh, Barnes, Coulter, Beck, Hannity, the PNAC crowd and the rest of his pals.

It took him a few minutes to adjust to the lack of light, the screams and the flames, but, hey, he's a trooper.

From Daily Kos, "Robert Novak, 1931-2009":

What respect has been earned?

Seriously. This is a guy who, in truth and in fact outed a CIA agent in order to further his petty political agenda and generally behaved like a rotten scoundrel.

He deserves to be remembered as who he actually was and if people are uncomfortable with that they ought to remember that throughout their lives they are carving into stone the image that they will leave behind of themselves and that no amount of post-mortem hagiography can ultimately erase the impression that they leave, whether it's good or ill.

I don't understand the hushed-tones demands that I not speak ill of someone whose actions are still stinking up the air, just because they themselves are no longer around. If Novak didn't want to be slammed when he wasn't around to defend himself, he should have thought ahead for two god-damned seconds about the indefensible things he was doing while he was doing them.

Now, it's just too damn bad. I feel myself under ZERO obligation to pull punches. Novak betrayed the United States. Now he's dead. Good riddance.

In the comments section at the Daily Kos:

* I Felt a Shudder in The Force ... Like the passing of a dark shadow on a sunny day.

* He wasn't the "Prince of Darkness" ... He was the "Douchebag of Liberty"

* The world is a better place now ... He was a bad, bad man ...

* No fucking loss ... A pox on his rotten soul.

* Shit belongs in the sewer. Robert Novack belongs in Hell.

* Cool ... Seriously, to hell with this false eulogizing of morally corrupt men.

Screw Novak, W.F. Buckley, and whatever evil, dessicated corpse happens to fall next off of the Conservative Establishment bandwagon.

From Joe. My. God.:

* Good. This world would've been better without him.

* It's unkind to say it but I'm going to anyway -- this man was the type that is so mean-spirited (like Lee Atwater) his own brain turned against him and murdered him.

* Some people do reap what they sow. The weight of bile and hatred wearing down on the Earth is lessened today.

* Novak was also known to have notoriously bad hygiene; his body odor the physical manifestation of the mental stink from his bitterness that he was born in the wrong place and the wrong time and, thus, missed out on working for the Third Reich.

* How very sad that this news didn't come years ago.

* Mother always said to speak good of the dead. Robert Novak is dead. Good.

* Ukranian Jew , who converted to Catholicism...what else do you need to know? From stupid religion to stupidest religion. Evil piece of shit. Rot in....well, wherever.

From Lawyers, Guns and Money:

* Fuck Bob Novak sideways ...

* Novak trumpted the conservative refrain against government programs while collecting a check from the corporation for public broadcasting. Hypocrite is the word.

* That resolves the argument about whether Novak or Dick Cheney is the vilest man in America.

* Well, if the public option goes down, I guess I'll have *something* to cheer me up.

Yes, my friends, that is what inhabits the left in this country.

Are you scared yet? You should be. We all should be.

Donald Douglas pointed out to me tonight that if you look back at the right's reaction on the web to the announcement of Teddy Kennedy's cancer diagnosis, you won't find this kind of vile, putrid hatred.

You can draw your own conclusions to that. I have certainly drawn mine.

Government is the problem, not the solution

As a follow up to my last post, please watch this short video of a leader who understood that government works for us -- not the other way around...



What I wouldn't do for Ronald Reagan in the White House now!

Let them eat...cake

I'm constantly amazed at the arrogance of our elected officials in Washington. Service in the government was supposed to be a privilege, and members of Congress were supposed to be the people's representatives. Perhaps there was a time, before big money lobbying and ballooning budget deficits, when that was largely true.

But not today.

Today we have a Congress made up of people -- on both sides of the aisle -- who think their position in Washington puts them above everyone else. They have created their own entitlement, with a prerogative that they can do as they wish, when they wish. They no longer work for us. We now work for them. Our tax dollars pay for their perks and their pork. And we are treated as if our opinions don't count. Its enough to make you realize that Reagan was right: Government is the problem.


The evidence of this is everywhere -- from Congress wanting to spend $500 million on new jets for them to fly around the world (on our dime) to them refusing to use the same government-run health care that they are now trying to pass in the House. Last month, Republican Rep Dean Heller (NV) tried to put an amendment on H.R. 3200, the current House Health Reform legislation that would have required Congress to give up their rich health benefits and go on the government plan like everyone else.

Democrats also voted down an amendment from Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nv.) that would require all Members of Congress to get insurance through the government-run plan. Apparently Democrat members of Congress do not like the government plan they’re trying to inflict on the rest of us.

In a straight party line vote, Democrats voted against exempting themselves from the government-run plan by a vote of 21-18. “We also had an amendment to require that members of Congress must participate in the government-run plan,” Rep Dave Camp (R-Mich) said. “If it’s such a great idea, it should be a great idea for members of Congress. The majority voted to prevent that from happening. They voted to exempt members of Congress from the government-run plan.”

No surprise, of course, that Democrats rejected this amendment -- when you consider that progressive leadership in the House firmly believes it is superior to the common folk like you and me. They sit on high and decree, spending our money as if it is water and exempting themselves from their decisions. It is truly shameful.

Now there is another attempt at this, HR 615, sponsored by Rep John Flemming of Louisiana who is also a physician. Flemming has put a link on his website that has a petition -- you can go to it and sign here. The fate of Flemming's initiative, however, is already sealed: the scoundrels will never agree to being treated like "regular folk". They're special, remember?

Fortunately, history has its lessons, even if many choose to ignore them. Marie Antoinette also famously once said "let them eat cake". And we know what happened to her. She lost her head (literally) in the public square.

Cake, anyone?

Single-Payer Health: If everyone can't have it, nobody shall have it

Is this the future of health care in America?

I desperately hope not. Please read the NY Times article below -- it is what awaits us if Pelosi, Waxman and Obama have their way:

Paying Patients Test British Health Care System

LONDON — Created 60 years ago as a cornerstone of the British welfare state, the National Health Service is devoted to the principle of free medical care for everyone. But recently it has been wrestling with a problem its founders never anticipated: how to handle patients with complex illnesses who want to pay for parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free from the health service. Although the government is reluctant to discuss the issue, hopscotching back and forth between private and public care has long been standard here for those who can afford it. But a few recent cases have exposed fundamental contradictions between policy and practice in the system, and tested its founding philosophy to its very limits.

One such case was Debbie Hirst’s. Her breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.

By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor.

“He looked at me and said: ‘I’m so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,’ ” Mrs. Hirst said in an interview.

“I said, ‘Where does that leave me?’ He said, ‘If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything’ ” — in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.

Patients “cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the N.H.S. and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs,” the health secretary, Alan Johnson, told Parliament.

“That way lies the end of the founding principles of the N.H.S.,” Mr. Johnson said.

But Mrs. Hirst, 57, whose cancer was diagnosed in 1999, went to the news media, and so did other patients in similar situations. And it became clear that theirs were not isolated cases.

In fact, patients, doctors and officials across the health care system widely acknowledge that patients suffering from every imaginable complaint regularly pay for some parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free.

“Of course it’s going on in the N.H.S. all the time, but a lot of it is hidden — it’s not explicit,” said Dr. Paul Charlson, a general practitioner in Yorkshire and a member of Doctors for Reform, a group that is highly critical of the health service. Last year, he was a co-author of a paper laying out examples of how patients with the initiative and the money dip in and out of the system, in effect buying upgrades to their basic free medical care.

“People swap from public to private sector all the time, and they’re topping up for virtually everything,” Dr. Charlson said in an interview. For instance, he said, a patient put on a five-month waiting list to see an orthopedic surgeon may pay $250 for a private consultation, and then switch back to the health service for the actual operation from the same doctor.

“Or they’ll buy an M.R.I. scan because the wait is so long, and then take the results back to the N.H.S.,” Dr. Charlson said.

In his paper, he also wrote about a 46-year-old woman with breast cancer who paid $250 for a second opinion when the health service refused to provide her with one; an elderly man who spent thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid instead of enduring a yearlong wait on the health service; and a 29-year-old woman who, with her doctor’s blessing, bought a three-month supply of Tarceva, a drug to treat pancreatic cancer, for more than $6,000 on the Internet because she could not get it through the N.H.S.

Asked why these were different from cases like Mrs. Hirst’s, a spokeswoman for the health service said no officials were available to comment.

Think that couldn't happen here under a single-payer system? Think again. The underlying principle behind health care reform in this country is to equalize access to health care for everyone -- not equalize the quality of service. The sentiment within the NHS that rich patients should not be able to access all the care that they can afford to save their own lives also animates the progressive movement in this country toward "universal health care". If everyone can't have it, nobody shall have it. That is what underlies this movement -- and you should not be lulled into thinking that "it can't happen here".

It can -- and it will if Obama prevails. Obama claims that "single-payer" isn't what he is after, and that the public option will keep the insurance companies honest. But the reality is that there is ample competition in the insurance industry already, and plenty of regulation. The public option is nothing but a trojan horse to "universal healthcare" for all -- with long waits, substandard care and all the attendant rationing that goes along with it.

Obama the steamroller

Jonah Goldberg at the National Review coined the brilliant phrase "Liberal Fascism", and I've written about the left's totalitarian tactics previously ("The Left's Nanny Aspirations" among other posts). Though the left talks incessantly about diversity and freedom, the reality is that liberalism has become a slave to ideological orthodoxy. You either are "with them" on the great issues of the day like global warming, single-payer health care and a litany of post-modernist afflictions (feminism, sexism, racism and the like), or you are their enemy. Diversity is the goal as long as it relates to gender, race or sexual orientation. It doesn't apply to ideas.

This is ever more apparent in the health care debate, where President Obama has trotted out his best Saul Alinsky street-fighting tactics to beat down the opposition -- which happens now to include a majority of the American people. The tactics are fit for an AFL-CIO meeting -- "fighting back" through name calling, mud-slinging and other methods of intimidation, as well as the creation of an email address where people can tip off the Obama Administration to people spreading "lies" about the government's socialized medicine plans (you can report me if you want, since apparently I am spreading lots of lies by -- you guessed it -- telling the truth about what Obama really has in mind.



In any event, it is really too late for the Obama Administration to save this now. The truth is out, and the tactics Obama is using to quell honest debate is backfiring in a big way. For proof of this, see the today's polling from Rasmussen: 32% favor single-payer health care and 57% oppose:

Thirty-two percent (32%) of voters nationwide favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% are opposed to a single-payer plan.

Meanwhile, the latest daily Presidential Tracking Poll, Obama's numbers are tanking:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -9 (see trends).

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Democrats Strongly Approve while 70% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 22% Strongly Approve and 40% Strongly Disapprove. See other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.

The result of these two trends means that the administration's health care plans are in serious trouble -- and so you can expect more fascist tactics in the coming weeks. Obama, Pelosi, Waxman and the other Democrats in Congress will stop at nothing to get their way -- so get ready for some Chicago-style hardball!

Check out this latest 90 second anti-health care reform video from Colorado's Independence Institute -- founded in the 1980s in Denver by my friend John Andrews and now ably run by John Caldara:




Picture H/T: Donald Douglas

Is this how the left "cares" for America?

You have to wonder whether the Democratic left-wing -- which is to say the president and most of the leadership in Congress -- really care about America. Though they talk eloquently about the "uninsured" and the need to make "sacrifices" for the good of the poor and middle class, their words ring hollow when you consider what their health care reform and "cap and trade" environmental legislation does to the nation's economy -- putting massive additional taxes and ever greater deficits on all Americans. It may not be clear to Democrats, but people get ahead by working, and jobs are created by those who take risks and make money. If you really care about the poor, the objective should be to put them to work in an expanding private sector -- giving them upward mobility. You get that through lower taxes and more market-based competition -- not higher taxes, regulation and government bureaucracy.

Of course, that presupposes that the left truly wants people to be upwardly mobile -- an assumption that I am very dubious about. I have a sense that the left really wants to create a dependent class of voters who need Democrats in power to survive -- and who pay little or no taxes and thus have no reason to oppose massive spending and even bigger deficits. It is a sad and cynical commentary on our political class -- but it is hard to escape any other conclusion when you look at what Obama, Pelosi, Waxman and Rangel are planning for our future.

As the Wall Street Journal shows today, the real price tag for health care reform is much bigger than the Democrats in Congress want you to believe. In a pure political calculation, House leadership has crafted a bill that delays the biggest deficit numbers until year 11 -- and then limits the fiscal analysis of the Bill's impact to (you guessed it) 10 years. The result is this:

Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the House health bill increases the deficit by $239 billion over the next decade. But government-run health care won’t turn into a pumpkin after a decade. The underreported news is the new spending that will continue to increase well beyond the 10-year period that CBO examines, and that this blowout will overwhelm even the House Democrats’ huge tax increases, Medicare spending cuts and other “pay fors.”

In a July 26 letter, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf notes that the net costs of new spending will increase at more than 8% per year between 2019 and 2029, while new revenue would only grow at about 5%. “In sum,” he writes, “relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.” (The House bill has changed somewhat in the meantime, but not enough to alter these numbers much.)

What does this say about the tactics being used to force through such sweeping, deficit-busting legislation in a matter of months? Obama yesterday came out and said that he was willing to pass health care reform "without Republican support" -- making is a purely partisan power grab. This kind of partisanship is supposed to be exactly what Obama wasn't going to be a part of -- but such campaign rhetoric was just that -- rhetoric. The reality is that the left wants its vision of socialized America, and is willing to steamroll anyone to get it -- Republicans, Independents and even other Democrats.

In the end, you can't avoid the fact that ObamaCare will bankrupt the nation -- and will bequeath on our children a financial mess of epic proportions. As the WSJ concludes today,

ObamaCare’s deficit hole will eventually have to be filled one way or another—along with Medicare’s unfunded liability of some $37 trillion. That means either reaching ever-deeper into middle-class pockets with taxes, probably with a European-style value-added tax that will depress economic growth. Or with the very restrictions on care and reimbursement that have been imposed on Medicare itself as costs exploded.

The White House Office of Propaganda fights back

The White House is "fighting back" on health care reform with -- you guessed it -- propaganda, lies and distortions.

Big surprise!

Linda Douglass is now the point person rebutting the video that I posted in my last post from Drudge that showed Obama -- in his own words -- saying clearly that he supports a single payer system and wants ultimately to eliminate private insurance. Here it is again:

So, in response to this, the White House Office of Health Reform puts out this video today:

Douglass says this:

"You know the people who always try to SCARE people whenever you try to bring them health-insurance reform are at it again. And they're taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they're cobbling them together to leave a VERY false impression. The truth is that the president has been talking to the American people a LOT about health-insurance reform and what is at stake for them.

"So what happens is that because he's talking to the American people so much, there are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there - they simply cherry-pick and put it together, and make it sound like he's saying something that he didn't really say."

Douglass point out in her video snippets not how Obama DID NOT say what he's on record as saying, but rather has Obama now saying something else -- that "if you like your insurance you can keep it" and that the "public option" is a way to check the dreaded private insurance companies and "keep them honest".

Now, beyond the fact that she doesn't refute what he actually DID say, he also isn't telling the truth in these new clips: that a "public option" would accomplish Obama's real goals of forcing out private insurance over a period of time -- because the public plan would operate at a loss and lead to price cutting that would force private insurers out of the market! Oh, and with price cutting comes rationing as well. But you didn't hear that from Obama, did you??

Now, according to the White House, I'm just a guy with a computer and "too much time on my hands" -- but this kind of dis-information is really quite something. Douglass is saying that Obama didn't say what he is clearly on video as saying.

Does the president think we are that stupid?

Of course he does! Obama can say it and then deny it -- and that makes it as if he never said it in the first place. His whole campaign was based on such falsehoods, half-truths and lies.

Fortunately, the American people are catching on and can not see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. And not a moment too soon!

See also Donald Douglas who is doing his usual thorough job!

Public turning up the heat on Obamacare!

The clips now out from a series of "Town Hall" style meetings with Obama Administration officials and other Democrats trying to sell the health care bill are pretty amazing.

It is clear to me that if this continues -- health care reform (at least of the variety now being debated in Congress) is as good as dead.

Check out this clip from Philadelphia (a Democrat Party stronghold) -- where turn coat Democrat Senator Arlen Specter and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius get hammered. Its great video!



And check out Democratic Rep Lloyd Doggett's return to liberal Austin, Texas -- where he is shouted down by the chant "Just Say No":



The reason for these protests is because the people know that what Democrats (and Obama) are proposing is a single-payer government-run health care system. All the lies that a "public option" isn't a "trojan horse" to get rid of private insurance is just that -- a LIE.

You can see and hear it in Obama's own words:



Keep up the pressure! Don't let the liars and crooks get away with this!